AuthorTopic: What are your soft factors? (Read 2053 times)

*Edit* That stupid smiley cut off the rest of my post, well here it is

As I was saying for us non-trad's who work full-time and have kids, what are you putting as a soft factor. I'm afraid that my EC's are blank due to me working mostly while in school (ok truth be told, i wasn't interested in joining any organizations in college) and now that I'm out I've been concentrating on working and raising my child.

Besides work experience, soft factors can be tough. I like to think being a parent is a pretty solid soft factor. I didn't have much besides that - a few charity bike rides. I've worked on some political campaigns, but not that I think about it, I'm not sure I ever even mentioned those. Oh, and my college EC's from 10-15 years ago.

Mine's mostly 10 years WE with the last few years in IT, and some volunteer work: at the zoo, and with animal rescue. Also several years of work on a game which I'm going to spin to online community-building. (I staffed on an online game for several years.)

Some good stuff during undergrad, and three internships, which will be mentioned, but it still happened ten years ago.

I know what you mean about weak soft factors. With a family of 4 (2 kids under 5 and 2, plus husband) living just at teh pverty level, I don't have a lot of time for fluff and EC endeavours. However, these are my meager EC factors.

~volunteer work with the CASA (court appointed special guardians, it's like an unpaid guardian ad litem kinda thing).~Class coordinator for my church's Deaf Ministry sign language class.~Member Pi Gamma Mu, honor society for social sciences.~Dean's list at both the 2 year comm college, and the UG university I'm at.~Nationally competitive speaker in high school forensics, extemp. speaking.

It's not much, but it'll have to do. Working fulltime, school double fulltime (to consolidate 3 years of UG into 15 months), and trying to raise a family has really limited the amount of extras I can do. Something I know most of you understand all too well!

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phooey

Not much here either..the standard work experience, nothing super impressive, but not Burger King either. High GPA while working and raising a kid..don't know if that counts for anything either.I've tutored history, ESL, social studies, etc., working now as a conciliator at the local dispute resolution center, worked as a research assistant for a historian at my university last year for the entire year and wrote an article with her, also presented research at the undergraduate research symposium. That's about it.

Basically, I did nothing until the last few years when I realized I wanted to go to law school and I better start beefing up my resume.

Initially I worked in IT, but then decided to switch to education after the economy took a turn for the worse. Had fun at the Dot com though!

Master's Degree in English Education- although the level of challenge that degree presented may not actually be a good thing to have on a resume (yes, I had a 4.0). While in school I wrote continuing dental education courses for dentists and dental hygienists, which I think shows strong writing/research skills but is otherwise not that exciting.

Two years working as an ESL teacher at a public high school in Japan that was one of about 100 Super English Language High Schools- pilot schools designed to improve the nature of English education within Japan by switching the focus from the exam-based grammar/translation method to more interactive methods. I had to create a course curriculum from scratch, present lessons to representatives of various universities, the national board of education, and to textbook companies. Coached some students in speech and debate who won/placed at various regional and national competitions.

I've traveled rather extensively- my last trip was taking the Trans-Mongolian railway from Beijing to Moscow on my way home from Japan.